“It’s voices,” she said, with an effort; “voices--like in the Bible--like the sound--o’ a great multitude; grander than the sea, or the wind. Do ye no hear?--and one that says ‘Isabell!’ among all the angels, and the saved that cry day and night, ‘Honour to the Lamb!’ Oh, hearken. One’s stopped, and it cries ‘Isabell!’ Ay, my man! I’m here--I’m here!” Then a great silence suddenly fell over the cottage, a stifled sound of feet moving, faint rustling of dresses, tinkling of the glass in which they tried to administer something to revive her, and afterwards low sobs, broken cries, but not another articulate word. The conflict of wills and voices had ended. Without a word, another brief ineffectual struggle took place round the bed--the last struggle with death--vain, passionate, hopeless effort. Isabell did not die all at once; this hard life, which is so bitter to live, so hard to begin, is hard too to end. She could not drop it from her so easily. For hours after they moved about that bed, saying nothing to each other, hiding their faces by times, stopping their ears not to hear the painful thrill of those last breathings, which seemed to shake the cottage. The doctor had time to come all the way from St. Andrews, and look at her, pitiful and helpless, shaking his head, and whispering that she did not suffer, that consciousness was gone and pain. But it was the middle of the night before the last breath died upon poor Isabell’s lips. No one of all the awe-stricken party left the cottage at first. Marjory was with the mother and sister by the bed. Mr. Charles, pale as a ghost, sat in a chair in a corner, looking on with a wondering countenance of sorrow. Had any one suggested it to him, he would have gone away; but he was absorbed like all the rest, and thought of nothing but of the wonderful act that was being accomplished before him. John Macgregor was standing on the threshold outside, his great person heaving with sobs. His wife, crying, but still with her wits about her, prepared with ghastly matter of fact composure to make herself of use. This was the scene upon which Fanshawe arrived, in the early darkening of the summer night. The baby, whom everybody had forgotten, had just awoke with a cry by the side of its insensible mother. Somehow this sudden protest of life against the pre-occupation of all the attendants on the dying, gave a touch almost of humour to the tragic scene. Marjory lifted the infant, and it was into Fanshawe’s arms that she thrust it, scarcely seeing what she did. “Take it to the woman,” she said, turning away from him. Where was he to take it? He held the helpless thing in his arms, no one finding it ludicrous, or even strange, till Jean relieved him of it. And then he went and stood with John Macgregor, not knowing who he was; or what had happened, outside the door. But after all, notwithstanding his ignorance and dismay, it was Fanshawe who brought so much common sense and